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The Facts About High Blood Pressure
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By Chrystle Fiedler
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Fiber up, pressure down! According to a recent article in the Journal of Hypertension, if you eat a high-fiber diet you can lower your blood pressure and even improve healthy blood pressure levels. “All the data support the conclusion that adding fiber to the diet has a healthy effect on blood pressure,” says Seamus Whelton, lead author and a medical student at the Tulane University School of Medicine. Whelton and his team analyzed data from 25 clinical trials with 1,477 adult study participants. “The most striking result was that fiber intake significantly reduced systolic and diastolic blood pressure in patients with hypertension. And people who ate 7.2 to 18.9 grams of fiber a day had a reduction in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.”
Eating more vegetables and fruits may provide the best boost to dietary fiber intake. A cup of black beans has more than 19 grams of fiber; 10 cherries contain 1.3 grams of fiber.
If you have hypertension and are unwilling or unable to consume additional fiber, fiber in pill form is an option. Also, speak to your physician about lifestyle changes—especially exercise, since it’s also been shown to help reduce blood pressure.
The sweet smell of peppermint and cinnamon may make drivers more alert and feel less frustration, anxiety and fatigue. Researchers conjecture that adding these aromas to cars’ interiors may help reduce the 100,000 highway accidents each year that result from inattentive drivers and those who fall asleep at the wheel.
Grape-seed extract may help protect the brain against age-related oxidative damage, a risk factor for dementia, according to a study out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). “The antioxidants in grape seed shift oxidation away from proteins and lipids in cells or tissues. That may protect certain organs such as the brain, which are especially vulnerable to oxidative stress,” says senior author Helen Kim, Ph.D., of UAB and the Purdue-UAB Botanicals Center for Dietary Supplements Research.
Here’s one more potential medical use for green tea: A new study in the journal Clinical Cancer Research reports that green tea extract may help standard anticancer agents by targeting cancer cells in the bladder, while leaving healthy cells alone. Bladder cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the United States, with about 56,000 new cases diagnosed each year. “We showed that green tea extract inhibits cancer cell growth, which was not surprising, but when it comes to bladder cancer, it appears that it has additional anticancer effects,” says Jian Yu Rao, M.D., a member of UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine. Although not all scientists agree that green tea is a useful remedy, there is speculation that the extract keeps cancer cells localized so they are easier to treat.
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